The present invention relates to the field of communications in general and more particularly to network address translation (NAT).
NAT is a widely used technology for resolving address conflicts between two discrete Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) networks. The NAT function translates the source and/or destination IP addresses in the header portion of IP packets as they cross the NAT threshold, so that packets originating in one network are mapped into unique addresses as they cross into the other network. This basic technology may be suitable for some types of network traffic, but may not be sufficient for the needs of network management platforms.